I was looking through my King Arthur Flour catalog the other day, and they sell a sourdough culture which they claim goes back 200 years. It wasn't made exactly clear, but it seems they were saying that their culture has literally been culture-ing for that long. There was a slight nuance that might be interpreted to say, "this type of culture has been used in New England for 200 years."
So I was wondering... do any of you know of someone who has a sourdough culture to which they claim this sort of longevity? Maybe a culture which you can attribute to a Mormon pioneer seven generations ago? Or even a Daughter of the Revolution?
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Have you seen this? http://carlsfriends.net/
That's an interesting source. It appears that it was kept live for a hundred years or so, but these days it comes freeze dried. Reconstituting it would likely rely on locally present wild airborne yeasts, as much as anything that might revive from the freeze dried sample.
I've reconstituted a dried culture and I don't see, given the closed container, how a local yeast could infect the sample. "World Sourdoughs From Antiquity" sells all their cultures dried and each retains its indiviual character.
Now certainly I don't know everything there is to know. I will grant you that any of the frozen and dried cultures identified above will probably show their original character (to some degree) when first reconstituted. Like dry activated yeast however, some of the vitality and character of the original culture must be lost in the process of drying.
Even so, those cultures were captured originally by allowing the native airborne organisms to invade and infect a flour and water medium. The Australian culture for example came from a woman setting a bowl of flour and water in her pasture. Once reconstituted in Utah or wherever, it would seem that the different bacteria and atmospheric conditions would prevail over the original culture now out of its element. After feeding and using the culture a dozen times, wouldn't that exposure to local bacteria contaminate the original culture? And after a year, wouldn't it have an entirely different makeup than the original?
I have heard that over time, cultures will tend to start to taste like wherever you live. This takes a matter of years, though. Usually the original culture is hardy enough to overwhelm any intruders for quite some time. The most popular sourdough culture is the San Francisco strain, which is the one everyone thinks of when they think "sourdough", and they've got factories far from San Francisco. There's a Middle Eastern strain I had for a while that didn't taste like sourdough at all. Not my favorite, but people that didn't like sourdough liked it!
Sherm got me thinking, so I read the "Sourdough International" website more carefully. Dr. Ed Wood, a microbiology pathologist, writes, "it was determined that sourdough cultures are symbiotic and stable. They do not change if taken to another geographical location, nor do they change from contaminates in the air."
And who am I to poo-poo that sort of difinitive data? Good thing I caught this error in thinking before the book went to press.
Brock, we have a sourdough start that we've maintained since my dad got it from a co-worker in 1969. She claimed that it originated in the Joe's Valley area (central Utah) area in the late 1800s.
We love the flavor, and it doesn't seem to have changed in the last 40 years. To get a strong sourdough flavor, we usually start a recipe one-and-a-half or two days before (depends on the seasonal warmth).
I've tried to make bread with it but have never been happy with the texture. We mostly make pancakes with it.
Hey Doug, I'm impressed! I've heard about these multi-generational cultures, but you're the first person who seems to actually have a live one. I notice you're in PA-- do you know of anyone in UT with the live culture? I'd love to try it if it was at all possible...
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